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Monthly Archives: October 2002

So I’m in Wisconsin waiting on a crash test to take place. I get to see a big van go boom. Should be good. I keep kicking myself though. I left my video camera and phone both back in Winamac. Doh! When else am I gonna get a chance to get a crash on film? (with no one getting hurt)

So anyway, I don’t have a whole lot else to say, save that wisconsin is kinda like indiana, except fewer people, more cows, and some hills. Hills are good.

I am back to blogging. There has been lots going on for me lately, and I must admit that writing has not been a priority (even when I have the time to do it).

I am slightly melancholy at the moment and don’t feel like getting in to all the things that have been happening for me. There really is so much to say. The reason I am writing is because I have been inspired to by Joel.

I must say, his beliefs about such things as gun control, legalizing drugs, and smoking…(ie people’s rights in general) seem to be dead-on. I too, am a libertarian who believes that my 2nd Amendment rights should not be altered or violated in ANY way. The government DOES NOT HAVE THAT RIGHT!!!!!!! I believe that smoking is a disgusting habit, but does that mean it should become illegal? NO! If Joe Blow feels like rotting his lungs out, more power to him. That is HIS decision to make. I think drugs should be legalized. Making them illegal doesn’t stop anyone from getting them anyway. And again, if Joe wants to kill himself by spending 90% of his waking life on a pot-high, he can go right ahead. And one thing, I am REALLY sick of is this line: Think of the CHILDREN! If you really want to make me mad, just go ahead and pull that one on me. The CHILDREN need flat-panel monitors in their schools. They need $30,000 sound systems piped through-out the same school. And if their grades on average are dropping, we better buy them some more playground equipment in order to stimulate their need to play and romp. In my opinion “think of the CHILDREN” is the ONE of the most powerful lines a politician can pull. What the CHILDREN really need is their mother and father’s guidance and love. They REALLY need to be at home with their parents learning from the person who loves them more than any teacher does. Instead the demand for good teachers is high because mommy wants to have a big career and she doesn’t want to be a housewife! How mundane. Doesn’t anyone keep up with the times, she’s EQUAL to all men and therefore should be respected outside of her home. Blah. If her career is more important than her child, then she shouldn’t have HAD one to begin with. It’s the same thing as practicing perverted sexual deeds, and then whining because you caught some disgusting STD. The deeds shouldn’t have been performed in the first place.

And if Mike Spike kills someone…I don’t want to be paying for him to live 100 years in jail, thank you! I want to see him executed. And hey, as for jails…TV, PETS, WORK-OUT ROOMS, SOCIAL OUTTINGS, LEARNING NEW TRADES?!!! I don’t think so!

Oh, and lets not get into WELFARE. There are women (teen-age girls mostly) who, if they have a baby by some man they’re not married too, and can’t go to school or get a good paying job because there’s nobody to watch her kid(s), those women get FREE DAYCARE AND FREE COLLEGE EDUCATIONS. After that, the government pays for their house or apartment. Which is why I can’t support Habitat for Humanity. Alot of those houses aren’t going to the people who really need them. They got to those same mommy’s. And don’t tell me that’s not true! I personally know someone who purposely had two children in order to get her education and living expenses paid for. She was really lucky too, her son turned out to be autistic, which means she gets EVEN MORE money, and his education paid for too!

Meantime, Dave who went to school and did the time for 4 years. Worked his butt off, and has to pay for every cent of it. A debt that will likely take decades to crawl out from under. Would the government compensate him? I think not!

He who doesn’t work, doesn’t eat. Right? Wrong! Lets visit the slums of Detroit. A place I’ve been many times. A pastor’s wife I know spent weeks collecting turkeys to deliver to the poor in Detroit. There are many. She froze the turkeys until the day before Thanksgiving. She visited a family who sported a brood of children, and a husband and wife who didn’t work, but let the government support them. They lived meagerly. Their house was a sty though. The sight of the ragged, dirty children, touched this good-hearted woman. She knocked on the door and handed the wife one of those hard-earned turkeys. The woman grabbed it and tossed it into the nearest garbage can saying “Turkeys take hours to cook, and WE’SE hungry NOW!”

End of story. Enough said. I think I’m sounding as cynical as Autonomous Josh.

Someone point out what I’m doing wrong, if anything, here. In my current vb.ignorant state, this seems like pure stupidity to me.

If I define three integers, say x, y and z thusly:

Dim x As Integer
Dim y As Integer
Dim z As Integer

Then I parse two strings (which contain integers) into y and z, thusly:

y = Integer.parse(stringOne)
z = Integer.parse(stringTwo)

Now I need to combine these two values for a specific purpose later on. I’ve already verified with the debugger that these two values are being parsed correctly, so I don’t have to worry about it. I would think that

x = y + z

would be all I ever needed, right? Wrong. With y=13 and z=6, I was getting an x of 136… Whicha-waa? Since when does the + operator concatenate integers? Never, so far as I know.

So, in order for x to really equal y + z, I have to do this:

x = y
x = x + z

::sigh::

vb.net is really great for doing simple windows apps quickly. I don’t need power right now. I would really like to not have to sacrifice correctness at the same time though.

Given the ads I’ve been seeing lately, I take it that it’s breast cancer awareness month/week/day. You know the ads: A woman with a deer-in-the-headlights look on her face is gracefully covering her breasts, sometimes with a towel, other times with just her arm, etc, etc. There is usually a textual message encouraging screening and peer pressure.

I’m just glad they don’t advertise for colon cancer in a similar way. 😉

So I had several things I managed to screw up while I was updating the blog Tuesday from the CS lab at Rose. I think I fixed all those. I removed the blogs that needed updating section, as they never seemed to get updated. Oh well. I expanded the recent comments section to display the last seven commenters. I also changed the title.

I added several people to the bloggers we’ve met category. In response to Keith’s comment earlier, I didn’t purposefully not link either he or Sarah Nelson. I’m lazy at times, and I followed links to their blogs from other people’s blog whom I read. Updating the blog has been problematic lately as well, because I’ve been trying to do less of it from work. (:

The career fair was enjoyable, as were activities surrounding it. I’ll blog about those soon, hopefully.

Hasta mi entrada próxima. (I saw my spanish prof at career fair. I feel the need to practice a tad

Heh. So I’m sitting in the computer science lab at Rose, killing time. Jerry and I are here for the career fair tomorrow. Got to recruit lackeys so that we don’t have to do all the work. Jerry went to watch Elizabeth at swim practice, so I thought I would waste a little time here. It’s fun to have an alumnus account in the CS department. Useful, at the very least.

It was a nice drive down here. First time I’ve gotten paid to take a nap while someone drives me. If you get a chance to try that, do it.

Tonight is going to be the first night that Melissa and I spend apart from each other since the wedding. To be honest, I don’t like it one bit. I’m very forlorn about the whole thing. Add that to the fact that I’m at the college where I just spent four years being lonely (well, so I wasn’t lonely the whole time. We’re being general here, work with me) and you have a recipe for a blue day. Hopefully things will improve with dinner. Jerry and I are meeting Becky and possibly Tim and Amy at Moggers. Hopefully that will be fun.

Melissa managed to kill a level 50 middie in Dark Age whilst I’ve been gone. I’m so proud of her. (:

She’s started working at a horse farm near home. It’s what she’s always dreamed of doing. I’m so excited for her. She’s going to be training to be a guide. God’s blessed us so richly in all areas of life. Life is good. I’ve been wondering what Melissa would end up doing as far as keeping her busy until she gets back to finish her degree. The owners of the horse farm seem to be just the sort of employers I’ve wanted for my Melissa.

While I’ve been here in the Haute, I’ve gotten a haircut. I dislike getting haircuts. I can never really tell the [barber|styelist|cosmetologist] exactly what I want. This will be serviceable though. I’ll have to have Mel give the final verdict.

Ah well. I’m running out of ideas for what to write about. I had like thirty things I wanted to blog. So much for that. I hope I don’t make a fool of myself tomorrow. I’m gonna practice what I want to say to prospective employees and interns tonight, so that I’m not completely unpracticed. I don’t intend to read from cards or recite from memory, but I do want to practice a little.

So I’m sitting here at 12:18am because I can’t sleep. My mind is going 300mph doing absolutely nothing. It’s so frustrating. Especially when I have to be up at 5:45am. Add to that the fact that I tried to sleep at 11pm to no avail.